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The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.

Norton Juster

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Norton Juster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1929
Born: June 2
Died: 2021
Died: March 8
Architect
Author
Novelist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Thing
Hardly
Easily
Worth
Effort
Wrong

More quotes by Norton Juster

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Do you think it will rain? Milo: But I thought you were the Weather Man? No, I'm the Whether man, for it is more important to know whether there will be weather, whether than what the weather will be.
Norton Juster
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The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.
Norton Juster
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You see. . . it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?
Norton Juster
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AHA! interrupted Officer Shrift, making another note in his little book. Just as I thought: boys are the cause of everything.
Norton Juster
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Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.
Norton Juster
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What you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.
Norton Juster
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Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.
Norton Juster
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What you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
Norton Juster
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Many of the things which can never be, often are.
Norton Juster
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That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times.
Norton Juster
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He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.
Norton Juster
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And remember, also, added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.
Norton Juster
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You see, years ago I was just an ordinary bee minding my own business, smelling flowers all day, and occasionally picking up part-time work in people's bonnets. Then one day I realized that I'd never amount to anything without an education and, being naturally adept at spelling, I decided that—
Norton Juster
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Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking.
Norton Juster
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It's bad enough wasting time without killing it.
Norton Juster
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A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.
Norton Juster
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Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?
Norton Juster
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I received a grant from The Ford Foundation to write a book for kids about urban perception, or how people experience cities, but I kept putting off writing it. Instead I started to write what became The Phantom Tollbooth
Norton Juster
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There are no wrong roads to anywhere.
Norton Juster
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You may not see it now, said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way.
Norton Juster